Kane and Alli the new style Archibald and Crooks
Graeme Souness speaking to Sky Sports as one of their expert pundits for the Watford game on Sunday said he was an admirer of Harry Kane and Dele Alli. Souness is one of the underrated pundits on TV, possibly second only to Gary Neville because he gives an honest assessment, rather than the diplomatic and non-commital views of others.
“He [Kane] can only get better. Looking at his character, the way he speaks and his appetite for the game… he loves scoring goals and is a great footballer. Unless he gets a bad knock…
“You’d say the same about Dele Alli – they seem to be two grand young men and they can only get better if they keep their feet on the ground.”
In days of old teams used to pay with two strikers, Alan Gilzean and Martin Chivers, Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks always spring to mind for me. Archibald was a super finisher, I thoroughly enjoyed watching him play.
Keith Burkinshaw bought the pair in the summer of 1980 after Glenn Hoddle had been our top scorer with 19 goals from midfield. Steve Archibald was signed first, in May, and cost £800,000 from Aberdeen. He had scored 23 goals to help them win the Scottish Championship. Garth Crooks joined next from Stoke City for £600,000. he had been their top scorer the previous season with 15 goals.
That season we scored 22 more goals than the previous season, Archibald scored 20, Crooks 16 of the 70 league haul (Hoddle 12). That season we won the FA Cup.
Now we have a new double act in Kane and Alli, both young, both developing, both scoring.
They compliment each other as Alli makes runs from deep that Kane pull the defenders away from. Some of their passing has almost been telepathic. When Alli isn't there we only have Son Heung-min who will run at defenders, but he doesn't make the kind of diagonal runs that Alli does, nor does Christian Eriksen, who much prefers to stay behind the ball.
The beauty of this side is there are goals from everywhere, but even so you need two players who are going to bang in a fair few. We know Kane is but he can't do it all on his own, it eases the pressure when Alli is scoring as well and he perhaps scores different types of goals to Kane.
The pair will be looking to pull Chelsea around once again, trying to take their defensive midfielder away from central areas. It has worked before.
Archibald and Crooks managed to lift some silverware for Tottenham, let's hope Kane and Alli can lift a lot more, starting this season.
3 comments
We'lllll take more care of you Archible Archibald.
And I was there for his last match and hated El Tell for taking him away but Keithy B had already fell out with Steve over an injury he said he didn't have.
He was part of the dream team and on their day it was like watching 11 angles.
I can only imagine what it was like watching the boys of 60/61 and it has been a long time coming but Harry & the boys are on their way to making me feel like I'm 15 again !
COYS
Now is a very exciting time again and I'm not only impressed by those two, who are doing real wonders, but also by the mentality brought to the club by Poch. I so agree with Clive that mentality is much more than half of the pie. With it we will continue to surprise bigger teams and really go places.